Carl Ludwig Frommel

1789-1863 German

Renowned for landscape paintings and steel engravings

Carl Ludwig Frommel was a German draughtsman, painter, etcher, copper and steel engraver who was known above all for his landscape paintings. Carl Ludwig Frommel was born as the third child of the master builder and architect Wilhelm Frommel (1759-1837) and Sophia Magdalena Schneider (1766-1804). He studied painting and engraving in Karlsruhe from 1805. His teachers were Philipp Jakob Becker and the court engraver Christian Haldenwang. In 1809 he traveled to Paris. There, Empress Joséphine commissioned him to create a twelve-part cycle of large-format landscape watercolors. Frommel spent time in Italy from 1812. He lived in Rome until 1817, where he moved in the circle of the Nazarenes. He traveled to Sicily with the up-and-coming young architects Friedrich von Gärtner and Joseph Daniel Ohlmüller. In the summer of 1817, he accompanied his painter friends Ferdinand and Friedrich Olivier, Johann Christian Rist and Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld on a journey through the Salzburg region. Frommel then returned to Karlsruhe. After his return, he was appointed professor of painting and engraving in Karlsruhe at the age of 28. Frommel was one of the founding members of the Art and Industry Association for the Grand Duchy of Baden, which was founded in 1818. During a study visit to London in 1824, Frommel acquired the new technique of steel engraving: in 1820, Charles Heath had published the first illustrative steel engravings in England, which were already very popular there. After his return, Frommel, together with the Englishman Henry Winkles, who also worked for William Tombleson (also in London), opened a studio for steel engravers in Karlsruhe in 1824, the first of its kind in Germany. On April 19, 1826, he married Jeanne Henriette Gambs (1801-1865) (second marriage) in Strasbourg; she became the mother of the sons mentioned below. Her father was the pastor Christian Carl Gambs. Frommel was also director of the Grand Ducal Picture Gallery from 1829 - the year in which Johann Poppel learned the art of steel engraving from him - until his retirement in 1858. The new building of the modern Staatliche Kunsthalle (planned by Heinrich Hübsch, completed in 1847) was built under his direction. After his retirement, he withdrew to Baden-Baden.